Thanks to Qubyte for the review code

Title: Street Racer Collection
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 11/26/2025

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Prelude

One of the games I plan to eventually review in my Evercade roundups was a fun little SNES game called Street Racer, which was present in Piko Collection 4. Unfortunately, my Piko 4 died on me, so I was no longer able to play it until I got a replacement copy. Still, it was a pretty solid Mario Kart clone I wanted to give more time with, so having it come to modern consoles was a pretty cool deal.

Thus, we have the Street Racer Collection, consisting of the Street Racer games Street Racer, Street Racer, Street Racer, and Street Racer. Yes, these are all ports of the same game. Thankfully the differences between versions are more distinct than you’d expect, but ultimately you’ll still be dealing with a single game ported to several different places.

Presentation

Let’s immediately rip into the worst part of the presentation; (and why I didn’t use the eShop store banner for the thumbnail here, as I normally would, and why you have the most tiny, compressed, bad screencapped eShop icon as the banner image, instead) the god damn AI art used for the keyart banner. Yes, I could tell it was AI before the Steam disclaimer, that stupid yellow tint is a dead giveaway unfortunately, plus the characters on the banner do not look like the characters in-game or their old key art. Let’s just cut to the chase and point out that no, AI art isn’t real art, yes, AI art is lazy as hell, and it’s detrimental to any game that incorporates it, even for just the store page.

The sad part is, this game does have pretty decent keyart on the Switch icon (if you can make out my crop of it), which uses the original art assets for a much better looking icon than the GenAI store banner. Why this icon couldn’t be repurposed into the actual storefront banner is beyond me. Thankfully, by the means of all things holy, I dug through the entirety of the collection and all the museum assets, where not a single AI art piece, or even the eShop AI banner are present in the actual collection at all. The collection itself is AI-free, just the eShop banner for some ungodly reason, and with how it appears to still be that way, I guess Qubyte decided to vomit up AI garbage for the advertising because they were bored? It’s not like the collection itself lacks artistic effort.

So with that reprimand given out, the actual collection keeps the nice game selection look we saw in the Accolade Sports Collection, with a far superior menu than the Qubyte Classics of old. You once again have an in-game menu of achievements to bring up along with instructions on how to play each game, but you now have the added addition of an extras menu with manual/box scans for each version of the game. Unfortunately, these scans are pretty low-res, but it’s still neat they included them here at all, especially the fact that somehow even these manual scans are in better shape than some of the ones I’ve seen in the recent Shinyuden reissues. There’s also some fun trivia associated with each version of the game, along with a sound test for each port.

In the games themselves, you have a few different visual options, from several different screen filters, screen sizes and a border toggle. There’s a very mediocre CRT filter here, but it does have a curved option that’s a little better, although unfortunately this does not change into a GB filter for that version. However, you do get a surprisingly robust palette selector when playing the Game Boy version, meaning you don’t have to just stick with the Game Boy Pocket coloring if you don’t feel like it. I honestly wish more GB reissues would do this, since it seems they either select the GB or GBP for their color options with nothing else even remotely considered.

Each version also has their own resolution, and they scale accordingly to your screen size, meaning that while some ports might look smaller than others at the pixel perfect aspect ratio, they’re more accurate that way, and it really makes the Genesis and Game Boy version look slim and sharp. (and the PC version being pretty tiny) All in all, a much, much better presentational suite, keeping in line with how solid the Accolade Sports Set was. I just have no idea why they put in so much honest effort with the compilation itself only to slap a GenAI banner on the eShop.

Gameplay

Like the Accolade Sports Collection, there’s more to this set than you might typically expect. I mentioned the expanded gallery including more art scans of the manual/boxes for every game version earlier, but you also have the return of rewind for every non-DOS version, and the addition of cheats you can toggle for each version, which helps to cut down on the grinding you’ll need to do in order to unlock everything in all the versions. (or just really irritate your friends)

The save/load states work just as they did in the Sports Collection, meaning they’re way faster and better than the shoddy Qubyte Classics of old; outside of the default option being set to load your save state, (meaning I accidentally reloaded a save instead of overwriting it more than once) these save states are far superior to how they were before, and are much easier to use because of it. There’s also button remapping present for all games, including shortcut buttons for the versions of Street Racer limited by button amounts. (like the GB/Genesis versions)

With all that out of the way, let’s get into each version!

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SNES– The original version that started it all! Yes, Vivid Image might have been computer developers, but this was a SNES original at first. The core concept of the game is essentially “what if Street Fighter II, but as Mario Kart”, and thus you have Street Racer. Here you pick from one of several different characters, each with their own special side and front attacks, along with a basic slap to hit racers who are right next to you. Use your techniques to damage or disrupt the other racers, and race through incredibly short tracks as you aim to clear each cup.

These cups aren’t your typical Mario Kart style cups either; sure, you still race and gain points to try and be the lead racer at the end of it all, but these cups aren’t just four tracks and you’re done. No, you have to do a crazy long gauntlet of the majority of the tracks in the game in order to finish a cup, no matter which difficulty you select. The short track lengths help to make this not as bad as it could be (if these were Mario Kart length, we’d be in trouble), but even still, just finishing the bronze cup will take a ridiculous amount of time. Still, they’re a decent way to test your skills in single player, and get to grips with the core racing.

You have those aforementioned moves as I mentioned before, and you also have assorted powerups and items you can run over to collect. From your typical boosts and hazards, these are fairly mundane and don’t come into play as much as one would hope. I figure that’s due to the short tracks, but even still, your special moves do more work than anything directly on the track ever will. There’s also a variety of bonuses after each race, not unlike ones you’d find at the end of a Mario Party board; extra points for collecting the stars scattered around the tracks, for hitting your opponents a lot, and so on.

There are two other modes, mostly geared toward the four player compatibility and meant for multiplayer purposes. You have the Rumble mode, where you must bump each racer out of the ring and be the last one standing, and this takes a good while to get going due to how the arena has a protective barrier that needs to be broken away at before anyone can actually lose, so it ended up too slow for my liking. Next you have Soccer, which is just what it says on the tin. You drive in Street Racer fashion, but to score soccer goals. Does it make sense? Not really, but of the multiplayer modes in this original version, I actually found this to be the most enjoyable. All in all, a solid Mario Kart clone that manages to be better than Super Mario Kart by pure nature of being easier to control. Seriously, that original Mario Kart has not aged well.

GENESIS– A PAL/Brazil exclusive, you might expect this to be like most Genesis ports from the time; taking the SNES original, throwing a horrific GEMS audio driver on it while making it look and control far worse. In a weird turn of events, no, Street Racer on Genesis did not go that route. Instead you have a scaled down effort that adds a few new elements while keeping the core concept (and the three main modes) while also making some refinements.

Instead of each cup being available at the same time, you now have to unlock them one by one. You also don’t have to play a ludicrous amount of tracks anymore, with the track count increasing depending on which cup you play. You can make a crazy gauntlet with the Custom Cup if you somehow miss that tedium, though.

The next big change comes from how the game plays. The controls are a bit more slippery than the SNES version, but that seems to have been on purpose to make up for the completely redesigned tracks. With no Mode 7, Vivid Image pulled off a different method of scaling the courses, and also changed up a few things along the way! You still collect your speed boost powerups by running into them, and can likewise run into explosive hazards, but this time around you can offload your dynamite to another vehicle if you run into them before it goes off, adding another way to mess with your opponents. You still have your special moves, albeit now with button combos since you only have 3 buttons to work with here.

Rumble is even better than before, since due to the hardware limitations you race in a circular arena where it’s much easier to knock out the other racers in a faster length of time. The weirdly open arena of the SNES version is no more, and I honestly preferred this structure a lot more. Soccer still is the same core concept, but feels a little worse to play. Nothing too drastic here, though, but all in all a shockingly good port for the time, especially considering this was late in the Genesis’ life.

GAME BOY– Now take that scaled down Genesis version, and scale it down even more for the Game Boy, and you should have the biggest disaster of the set. Except somehow, by some miracle, Game Boy Street Racer is actually pretty OK.

You still have the more curvy roads/powerup system of the Genesis port, and still have to use a button shortcut on the D-Pad to use your turbo, but by and large this plays shockingly well, even being a tad less slippery than the Genesis version was for me. It isn’t SNES levels of tight mind you, but Street Racer on Game Boy is still enjoyable. The progression through cups is still here, as are all the racers and their special moves, meaning that this is still a fun romp if you dedicate yourself to beating all the courses, being that they’re also based on the Genesis ones. (lord knows if the SNES cup length could even survive a Game Boy player’s attention span)

Even Rumble continues to be a fun mode, being based off the Genesis version as well, thus meaning that this GB port has a better Rumble mode than the SNES original. Unfortunately, there’s no way to play the multiplayer in this version, so you’ll be fighting the CPUs here. Soccer is also pretty messy and by far the worst version of that mode. For a handheld version, this one somehow isn’t a throwaway even though it came out when the Game Boy was near death before the Pokemon revival kicked in.

DOS (PC)- You might go “wait, where’s the PS1 version?” well, this DOS version was the base for that version, so fear not, you still have the pseudo-remake of Street Racer available in DOS form. Here the entire game has gone through a huge shakeup, while still maintaining a similar gameplay structure and the same roster of characters. While the Genesis/GB versions were changed for the sake of regressing to inferior hardware, this DOS version does the opposite and adds onto the original game, although not every change is for the better.

Here, you return to some elements inspired by the SNES original. The courses are more Mode-7 like again, there’s intense rubber banding to the point of insanity, (seriously, the CPUs here do not play around) the items are like the Genesis one, and you even have some new techniques like the ability to shrink yourself. Why can you shrink? I don’t know, it doesn’t really do you that much good! You also have to weirdly let go of the accelerate briefly in order to use your turbo boosts, which can take a bit of time to get used to.

There’s also a new overhead, zoomed out mode for the standard racing, that lets you control the game from a different perspective. I didn’t really like this one at all and found it to be incredibly frustrating, and quickly went back to the default on this. The two bonus multiplayer modes also make their comeback here, with Rumble being akin to the SNES version again, but with a much better arena that makes it way more fun than the slow starting SNES arena to the point it might even edge out the Genesis Rumble mode for me, and Soccer is back yet again, being perfectly fine.

Not much else to say here, except there are also a bunch of extra unlockables and more incentives for you clearing all the cups now, which is gonna be quite a challenge with how extreme the rubberbanding CPU is. You’ll need all the luck you can get!

Conclusion

In conclusion, Street Racer Collection is an interesting way to see how a game evolved over time, even if calling this a “Collection” is a big stretch. Each version does have more distinct differences between them than you might originally assume, but ultimately once you pick your favorite, you picked your favorite. All of them offer solid racing fun for their platform, and while the later versions improved on the bonus multiplayer party modes, the increased rubber banding might make those ports a bit too annoying to handle unless you feel like using cheats to make the single player unlocks much easier.

Regardless, this was surprisingly a lot of fun, and if it wasn’t for the ludicrous length of the SNES version’s championship mode, I’d even go as far as to deem it easily superior to Super Mario Kart, especially since this has four player support; the fighting game like mechanics are genuinely fun, the Rumble mode is a blast in the Genesis/DOS versions, and Soccer works better in this engine than one might assume.

Sadly, when you are having to deal with the same game four times, it can feel a little tedious for a steep price, and I can’t help but wonder if Street Racer would have been better mixed in a collection with some other Vivid Image titles. Not to mention that AI banner art is enough to annoy me a lot as is, but since the game itself is completely free of it, I’ll not let that impact my score this time around.

I give Street Racer Collection a 6 out of 10.